


Does Everything but Live

by zetsubonna



Series: On Va Voir [26]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Crying (Reader), Disassociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emphasis on hurt, F/F, F/M, Identity Issues, M/M, Multi, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Other, Poor Bucky Barnes, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Wizard of Oz References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 18:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7064095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/zetsubonna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Asset slipped away in the chaos of the collapse of SHIELDra.</p><p>Uncertain of who, precisely, they are, Bucky and the Winter Soldier must learn to reconcile their recently reclaimed body as a timeshare, while also ducking Steve, Sam, HYDRA, various governmental and nongovernmental agents, and carefully mapping the landmines of their shared memories.</p><p>If you liked "Original Programming" and "Full of Machinery I Am," brace yourself for utter emotional destruction. That's my goal here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Oil Can

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Original Programming](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1838422) by [zetsubonna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/zetsubonna). 
  * Inspired by [Full of Machinery I Am](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2697230) by [Bluandorange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluandorange/pseuds/Bluandorange), [zetsubonna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zetsubonna/pseuds/zetsubonna). 



> In the third OZ book, _[Ozma of Oz](http://www.feedbooks.com/book/205/ozma-of-oz)_ , Dorothy reads the following on Tik-Tok’s casing:
> 
> **SMITH & TINKER'S**  
> Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking Mechanical Man  
> Fitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment  
> Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live
> 
>  
> 
> Manufactured only at our Works at Evna, Land of Ev  
> 

There are two of them, at any time. One can feel, the other is numb. When it becomes necessary to go numb in order to endure the pain, the softer of them dives, dives deep, and goes quiet and still. The longer they are two-in-one, the deeper the soft one burrows, until only the numb one, Winter, surfaces, and the soft one buries himself in the ice, both of them willing to let him sleep forever rather than die, together-alone.

In the in-between times, when there is no ice, they try to piece together their fragments, but since the softer of them dives so deep, they lose things. There are images, flashes, and he's rarely up long enough to assemble anything meaningful. Winter is not meant to remember, he's meant to follow orders, though he knows it would be safer, less painful, if he could take those orders from the soft one, instead of those who push them into the ice and break the pieces apart.

" _Bucky_?" The Man on the Bridge says. The soft one surfaces, screaming so loudly that Winter loses his concentration, starts to think rather than follow orders, starts to assemble pieces again-

They are not given back to the ice. They are torn apart, more forcibly than has been necessary in a long time, with the intent of breaking them, maybe beyond repair this time. After that, Winter actively tries to keep Bucky under, to pin him down that they might live, but Bucky cannot sleep anymore. He would rather be dead, and they nearly allow themselves to die, but for their need to save the Man on the Bridge.

* * *

  _Steve_. The Man's name is Steve, and he is not just any man. He is at least a dozen pieces of who they used to be, so Winter goes looking, and the soft one, _Bucky_ , lingers in the back of their mind like a ghost trying desperately to find form.

The longer they are out of the ice, the more pieces they are able to track down and reassemble. They aren't merely fractured and broken, they have become a puzzle, a jigsaw, and one of the many things they discover is that, while they struggle to recall themselves, they are able to bring back inconsequential things, long-term memories, names, culture, concepts.

When Bucky had lived alone in his own mind, he'd read a collection of stories over and over. There was a character in those stories who was like Bucky: a living construct who had once been a man. The man, Nick, had been enspelled. He'd hacked away all of his limbs, which were replaced with limbs of metal, and then his head and body were also replaced with metal, leaving him with no brains, no heart, and a body easily frozen. The man was prone to weeping when he hurt others, by accident or on purpose, and when he did, his jaw would rust closed, and he would be unable to speak.

At the same time, there was another, a creature who looked like a man, but was a machine. The machine was a slave with no heart, only mechanical brains that required winding to activate, like a clock. Under the directions of his masters, he could be given a weapon, and would be able to smash down any number of opponents. The machine was clever, tireless and efficient, with no opinions either way, although he could, theoretically, understand ethics, and know what he was asked to do was cruel. Tik-Tok could not stop, though. He could only do what he was wound up to do. He truly made, under the right master, an exceptional soldier.

The two of them read the stories again, concluding the parallels were apt: they were both, and neither; and, in any case, they were broken and rusted, possibly beyond repair.

* * *

 Steve was always on the edge of Bucky’s memory. Winter saw Steve as a liability, in no small part because of the distraction he represented that kept Bucky from diving, from giving Winter leave to protect the two of them, especially now that they had decided they weren’t going to kill anyone, no matter what.

Bucky thought it was in Steve’s interest to keep Winter away from him; because no matter how much time Bucky managed on the surface, he’d have to dive again when things were tight, and Winter would not be able to process their situation, Bucky’s screaming, and Steve’s desperate pleas at the same time.

So, even though they knew Steve was chasing them, and that Steve meant _home_ , _hope_ , and _family_ , they kept themselves thousands of miles distant whenever possible, sometimes even doubling back behind Steve to make sure the trail stayed cold.

After all, Winter reminded Bucky, love was a liability, too. It was out of love that Nick earned the curse that cut his heart wholly from his body, and made him forget. They could not afford to forget anything anymore. Best to walk away before there was trouble, to evade any kind of a fight.

Winter let Bucky have his pictures, his sketches, his notes, the bits and pieces of Steve they could carry with them in the small bag that was their only lingering possession in the world. It kept Bucky quiet, as much as anything could keep a man whose throat had more than once bled from screaming quiet in his mind.

* * *

Steve had friends, and for that Bucky was grateful. The most constant companion since the failure of their Final Mission was the FALCON, the Man with the Wings, the one reports said was able to bring a knife to a gun fight and win. Winter had tried to kill FALCON at least twice, and both times he had lived, which wasn’t a thing many could claim. Bucky thought he was very brave, and, with the way he trailed doggedly after Steve in spite of Steve being _incredibly stupid_ , he must be very loyal. His was the only call sign they bothered to remember.

There was THE SPY, who Winter told Bucky was another ghost. She and Winter had a history, and Winter’s orders for Bucky were to avoid her, though he could only ignore her at their peril. She was THE SPY because, of all the spies Winter had ever known, she was the best. She was a formidable opponent, like FALCON. She was dangerous, because she was not enough afraid of him to keep her distance. She would come in closer than others dared. He had shot her, once. At the bridge, she had broken his goggles. Bucky was glad she wanted to protect Steve.

There was a MONSTER, who was only a monster sometimes, and other times seemed to regret it as much as Winter regretted himself, maybe even as much as Bucky did. There were the OLD SPY, the DEMIGOD, the ARCHER, and the WITCH, who were, for Winter and Bucky, largely unknown entities, for all Bucky and Winter agreed OLD SPY was largely a pain in the ass.

There was the ROCKET MAN- Bucky and Winter would not let themselves think of the ROCKET MAN. He was powerful, but broken, and part of the brokenness was one of the many strikes that Winter and Bucky could not reconcile with what passed between them as a conscience. ROCKET MAN had a lot of money, and a FLYING SOLDIER who would protect him as fiercely as Bucky had protected Steve, before Winter was needed.

AGENT was a null file. Winter kept her from Bucky’s awareness as best he could. She was elderly, dying. It would bring up other echoes of people Winter vaguely knew from mission reports that Bucky was less inclined to recall, as the old friends’ blood did not all stain Winter and Bucky’s hands, other than-

Access Denied. There was no time for that cycle of thoughts today, not now.


	2. Wind Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Winter Soldier have an insomnia routine. It's like Abbott and Costello, but less funny, and with cursing.

_Go back to sleep._

Bucky was getting used to talking to himself. He hadn't had time to notice the habit as it was developing, and now it was unbreakable.

_Go back to sleep._

_I'm not sleepy. I'm thinking too hard._

_This is wasteful. Sleeping is required._

Bucky rolled off his mattress on to his palms and toes and began to do push ups. When the barest hint of sweat began to pool in the small of his back, he tucked the back of his left fist into it and did the pushups one handed. Relying too much on his left hand made him feel like a lopsided crab.

_Go back to sleep._

He damned well knew he could not go back to sleep. Reading on his tablet was out, too, backlighting would just make his insomnia worse. Light pouring into his brain when his eyes were trying to close reminded him of the chair.

Sleeping reminded him of the freezer.

_Regardless, sleeping is required._

Bucky wrinkled his nose, then repositioned himself for sit ups with his hands in fists against his chest. His back protested for the first forty-seven, then resigned itself to its usual tortured humming. Having metal studded along one's spine was inconvenient. He tried not to think about it too hard.

_Hypervigilance and cyclical thoughts are the root of the insomnia._

Bucky really wished his headmate would find a less robotic tone of voice, but at the same time he was grateful for it. Obviously, they were too paranoid to sleep, but the paranoia was not unfounded. THE SPY had leaked HYDRA's files to the world, so eventually they would not just be a secret to which only a few people were party. Eventually, the world would figure out that they existed to be sought after, and once they got done dredging the wreckage of the airships from INSIGHT, well-

_Regardless, sleep is required as a component of homeostatic balance._

Bucky finished his two hundredth sit up and rolled to his feet, heading for the sink. He washed his face and ran a wet, cool hand through his sweaty hair, the metal one resting with concentration in a gentle position on the edge of the sink.

"You know, 'Go the fuck to sleep' works, too," he grumbled. He held his right hand cupped under the tap, scooping the water into his mouth, then swishing it through his teeth in lieu of a fourth round with the toothbrush.

_Exercise releases chemicals conducive to restful brain activity._

Bucky spat the water into the sink. "No shit. Looks like m'a fuckin' genius all around."

_Bleak humor is often a helpful coping strategy._

"How about _you_ go the fuck to sleep, and cut the fuckin' Baymax routine, huh, Tik Tok?"

Talking to himself out loud was worse, probably. He needed to learn to internalize his monologues, especially when his voice sounded raw half the time, like the scars from his screaming still weren't fully healed.

_Periods of nonverbal communication may assist in lightening the cognitive load of the alternative psyche._

_Christ Jesus, I fucking hate myself._


	3. Copper Plated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky doesn't like hide and seek, but he's good at it.

He doesn’t know where to start.

He tried history books, but he wasn’t in them. Steve was. People wrote pages upon pages of who Steve was, most of it guesses, most of it not running along with things he thought he remembered, ghosts of what he maybe thought he sort of knew. But for himself there was about a paragraph for every page, if that. Two or three sentences.

It was hard not to think his whole life revolved around Steve when that was all anyone remembered of him.

Soldier/Asset/Tik-Tok recited facts in the background and tried to make him feel bad about tearing pictures out of books, magazines, newspapers. He tried his hand at sketching but he didn’t have the training or practice for it. He could take apart and clean thirty types of sniper rifles but he couldn’t do much more than trace an outline of the jaw that had been almost the same in the befores as the afters.

He glued and paperclipped the pictures into notebooks next to notes in English and Cyrillic that copied text word for word from books, magazines, newspapers.

He had three pages of a notebook that just said _Who am I?_ and _James Buchanan Barnes_ over and over and over and over and-

* * *

_Melted down and made into pennies- In that case, I would still keep going._

“Pennies do,” Bucky supplied, quietly grunting and turning over on the mattress in the hostel.

_And I am nothing if not a bad penny._

* * *

He drifted from one city to another, and he could tell when Steve and- _Sam, his name is Sam, he is Samuel Thomas Wilson, he’s an Air Force veteran and his mother is a teacher_ \- were close behind, he would take special care to disappear more thoroughly than usual, sometimes even doubling or tripling back to avoid them.

There were so many warring thoughts and impulses in his brain, he never knew from one day to the next who he would be or where he would try to go, sometimes he would have an entire plan made and then he would get an instinct, an inkling that it wasn’t right, that he’d chosen incorrectly, and suddenly jump a cargo train and ride three hundred miles in the opposite direction.

Sometimes, though he had no connections, he would have those instincts confirmed, he would see a politician or someone who had once been in the vault, whose face looked like one that had hovered over him, a face seen through frosted glass, a face on a projector screen confirming a kill shot, he would remember all his ghosts and keep fleeing.

He took scalding hot showers in truck stop bathrooms and cried silently in his window seat at the back of cross-country buses at midnight.

Seven pages. _Who am I? James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. My friends call me Bucky. Thanks, Buck. James Buchanan Barnes was the only one of the Howling Commandos to give his life- Who am I?_

* * *

_I wouldn’t be surprised if Ruggedo melted Tik-Tok in one of his furnaces and made copper pennies of him.  
In that case, I would still keep going._

“Pennies do,” Bucky breathed, shoving a scavenged newspaper with an article about the robot near-apocalypse and a smear of raspberry jam from his breakfast into a corner trashcan.

“Pennies do.”

* * *

Steve looked. Bucky hid. He’d never been nearly as good when they’d played in the playground.

He had gotten a lot better at this game, but he didn’t want to remember how.


End file.
